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From descriptions - no. It took for me to actually interact with my dual to start recognizing what duality is all about, like the dynamic of it. It does feel slightly addictive. This isn't romantic duality, we're penpals and chat once in a while.

Hi there.. Im not sure if Im experiencing what is called as duality.. but a person who I have known for almost two years through professional realms, he has had some seemingly wierd effects on me. We aren't close friends, but I feel completely aware of when he is around. He is what I would consider an extrovert and I an introvert. He made a speech when I first became aware of him, and I walked away.. with a surreal feeling which I cant describe, apart from talking with people in a very unknown responsive way of confidence. Lately, I somehow locked eyes with him unexpectantly for what seemed a long time.. and felt myself in a trance like state where I was completely relaxed.. with him then standing next to me, I felt one with him.. but was also so scared of this unknown feeling that I soon walked away. I also then another time was walking, when I heard him walking behind.. I seriously felt a pull back towards him!!!! I could be going crazy, but from all the readings that Ive done on the web, this seems to fit the what I have encountered. I feel a force drawn to him, which transforms my being to another state which I cannot describe.. but as relaxing (maybe euphoric?). And its freaking me out, as I like to be in control of myself at all times inside. Comments? Questions?

I know lots of duals, and I can basically tell, even just from appearance sometimes, that we get along. This is also mutual - I am more likely to be approached by a dual than someone of any other type.

I think I keep running into my Conflicting dual, which I think is perfect for me until reality strikes.

Besides, they say, you don't recognise your dual because they are in Super-Ego "mode".

Meeting

According to socionics.com "Nature has played a little trick on us. It is difficult to notice your Dual partner among all the other types and even easier to pass them by. Usually during first contact extroverts think about their introvert Dual as ordinary and simple, therefore not deserving their personal attention. In return introverts consider their extrovert Dual to be too good for them and therefore unattainable. Both positions usually belong to people who had a lack of Duality interaction during childhood." It is also possible that duals pass each other by because when they first meet they are likely to act through their Super-Ego functions, which is received with boredom from the other party.

I have LIE as a result as an ENTP. I don't know if this socionics test is reliable.

I took around 8 times the MBTI test. Maybe I'd better try 8 times the socionic test.

Beyond the fact that I am sceptical about a subject I did not explore enough, what seems very strange to me is that we are dealing with a serious subject (knowing better oneself and others) that proposes you better knowledge by choosing pictures between two individuals at the end of the test !!!!

I did the "man test and women for fun", ok... Bad boy and girl next door are not bad, and cool. And maybe one day, if I'm lucky enough, I'll have a drink with both. In other words, I enjoyed those funny results.
What I'd call "Cool threads".

But dealing with socionics, and personal fulfillment, the truth is that I'm pretty sure tomorrow, I'll get up at different time and be in a different state of mind and have different preferences about those pictures. So... HOW TO KNOW THIS HAS A REAL MEANING ?
Questions can be considered seriously. But those pictures...

So I'm far from Duality right now. Unless doubt is the dual part of curiosity

yes, easily. Does it instantly go anywhere, not necesarily. I dont fall or go after every woman that shows interest or that there is some interest on my part. I dont fall quickly or easily nor do I always have alot in common in with my dual, its just that we match really good personality wise. And being an introvert I dont pursue conversations much, nor do I attempt to be social much.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, because that's all it is compared to the ocean of complexity when it comes to actions and real life.

As a general policy, I make a point to mistrust anything advertized as 'the only legitimate one-true way'; Especially, it seems to bizarre to postulate that the most perfect, natural state for people is something that is not even attainable for most, given the uneven numbers of Sensors and Intuitives.
Given the notorious scarcity of IEIs, the SLEs of this world would be basically screwed. (as if theit lives weren't made hard enough by the school system)

It seems to me like someone thought up a great theory bt then overdid the extrapolating from it, a suspicion that just got stronger when I heard that even some socionics peeps thinks it's overhyped/ that it's inventor might've been biased and overidealized duality because of her own unhappy marriage.

Though socionics is generally the more detailed, sophisticated theory, I think that when it comes to ppl's relationship with their inferior functions, it's MBTI which is right: Rather than wide-eyed admiration, people tend to have a very ambiguous relationship with it & be very critical of the negative manifestation of that function in society, and there are huge individual differences, from some who embrace it to others who hate it to everything in between; In any case, it's very likealy that your inadequacy in this area got you into an embarassing situation at least once. I for my part obviously think that empathy, fun & consideration are good things, but I loathe nothing more than hypocrites and two-faced people, and I try my hardest not to be one and expunge such tendencies from myself as much as humanly possible.

I even read one post warning against being swayed into a relationship by your inferior function, arguing that your sub-conscious might mistake that person for a shortcut to wholeness and enter a relationship wit a person who has completely different priorities, sort of a desire to 'eat that person to gain their powers'.
If you're really seeking a part of yourself, you're not truly seeing your partner... and you might have the same love-hate relationship with them that you have with your inferior.
Even back then (before I knew socionics), I questioned wether it might not be possible for such a relationship to work if both partners are self-aware about it - but to completely disregard that danger seems silly, especially as socionics itself aknowledges that appealing to the inferior is a good way to citcumvent someone's higher reasoning & manipulate them... and I'm supposed to go for a boyfriend who could easily manipulate me and for whom my natural way of talking might hit a sensitive spot?
Not convinced. That seems more like a difficult option only particularly mature people could master than the easiest & most natural.

I know of several cases where the duality thing worked, but they do not seem to have those advertized overly perfect enlightening relationships & quarrel just like all other couples. Obviously having the same functions would somehow impact the relationship, but, my impression would be that it's a combination with advantages & disdadvantages like any other - In fact, I get that impression from the socionics texts themselves, many of which seem to argue for matching the types most likely to put up with/suffer each other than to really connect, and reeks of the antique idea of a marriage as an economical unit instead of an union between equals, and of traits of human individuality such as introversion as 'something to be fixed'.

That might be my 5 talking, but I personally don't like my weaknesses showed in my face all the time, and I'd honestly rather have an unitidy room than someone who feels compelled to clean up after me like I am some sort of child. That would be the worst, and not very fair either. A relationship is supposed to be about mutuality: You can hardly have one person doing all the relationship-ing, let alone the housework! That is not fair, hardly conductive to both parties feeling appreciated, and seems like something only a shameless person would like.

See this article - Despite it's praising tone, when you try to extract the actual facts, you see that duality actually has real disadvantages:
- The risk of really creepy dependency
- While often advertized as the quick root to self-actualization, this says you will not actually improve - in fact, your skills in parts of life you're already unskilled in might atrophy because you let someone else handle them
- Being drawn to these people in a desperate state, which does not strike me as a good state to make decisions in (apparently, people do prefer similar partners when not stressed.)
- tendency for the pair to become encapsulated
- more jealousy than usual

Even in a relatively happy dual couple (that still has their occasional differences, like, Y'know, normal humans) the wife talks like she would be completely lost & inept on her own even though she's an ostensibly intelligent, reasonable person and obviously must've survived somehow before she met her husband.

I also know of cases where 'duality' has resulted in a downright horrible relationship, such as my parent's marriage (LSI X IEE), and my own brief entanglement with an ESE dude, probably the worst & most painful out of the long-term relationships I've had.

As for my own meeting with ESEs, they were rather diverse - there's several family members that I am not exceptionally close to but consider pretty virtuous & likeable, a bunch of loose aquaintances I would have considered friend material, and several encounters with 'mean shoolgirls' that were shallow judgemental people, two-faced false friends or merciless bullies and generally the people I've hated the most.
I do think that it is sometimes easy to talk to some of them / that they seem reasonable, but not in a way that would be super exceptional.

I can't say that my ex was a bad person, the most I can accuse him off is being a little bit jealous & judgemental but I guess he just didn't know what to with me/ how to make sense of me/ part of it may have been my failure to send the signals he expected, but, it was a very clear case of round hole and square peg.

From the beginning it was obvious that he was a very, very extroverted, sociable person - We could not walk two blocks without running into someone he knew, and he would frequently get phoned by friends during our meetings, which is pretty much the opposite of me, a very reclusive person even by introvert standards - I'm sure he had no malicious intent/ only meant well, but basically every thing I revealed about me appeared strange and off-putting to him - He was like, 'do this, do that, I will be good for you', and at the time I agreed, because I had no reason not to/why not try new things, but inwardly, I had to try hard not to see it as complaints or being treated like some sort of child just for not adhering to social norms (Like carying a hairbrush at all times, or being crazy about fitness. I mean, I understand if he wants a fit girlfriend with neat hair, but then why aproach me? There is no shortage of fit girls with neat hair.).

He could not understand how I could be so socially inexperienced or scattered, and the way he reacted made me feel like a freak.
He felt off-put by what was presumably my insufficiently passionate reciprocation, or, that the physical part of the relationship just wasn't doing it for him (?) and to my attempts at pleasing him better and fixing things he hadn't liked he reacted with suspicion, or they didn't seem to be things that mattered to him.
He himself said that he never had such problems with any girl before - and none of my later or earlier relationships were this unpleasant, with people often liking the very traits this guy disliked, or appreciating things that would not have mattered to him.

We just had extremely different needs and styles of communication - He was, for example, upset that I didn't write him more often. I tried to do so, but I so badly misjudged what he meant/wanted that even my writing/phoning "more" made no difference.

Or , he complained that I didn't say 'I love you' enough. But I really don't like to say that carelessly/ want to be certain, and we had not known each other for that long a time.
The idea that we would be "what the other naturally expected" is preposterous! For example, I proposed we have a drink, and he said yes... a bit later in the conversation I find out he's muslim (and therefore doesn'r drink), he said he'd just have a coke, like, he just assumed I wanted him to put up with something he disaproves of, that I would never ask of him. Obviously I said we need to go somewhere else where we can both enjoy it, but, that already indicates different values.
I don't like faked consideration; I don't hate it as much anymore/understand it better now, but I'd still prefer people tell me the truth to my face, like, if they don't tell me the real situation, how am I to react correctly? I never know if people like that actually like me or just put up with me & secretly resent me, so even if I understand that they just want to be polite, I don't think I could live in close quarters with such a person.
The funny thing is, I thought the fact that he's religious and I'm not would be the biggest potential problem, (though I didn't mind/ thought we should be able to overcome that/ though that 'at least he seems to think & care about ethics & reflect about life, that is good') but we broke up before that even entered into it!

At the time I gave his complaints more weight because he'd be considered more 'normal' than I, but I didn't feel like I was getting through to him, either. I would write long letters related to topics we'd discussed, but he just gave short, vague replies unrelated to the topic, which made me worried that I was just annoying him... But yet, he wanted me to write/talk more, and I did not know what to talk about, like, there were no topics.

Even our first conversation was a misunderstanding - From my POV, we had had a perfectly fine, friendly conversation, from his, he'd been trying to hit on me and felt I was somehow giving him the cold shoulder/ no chance - given that he invited me to his place afterwards, I was aware that him having the intent to seduce and/or date me was a possibility,, but I did not realize that was his intention.
Normally, it would not be my tendency to become someone's girlfriend after just two meetings, but he did seem like he genuinely & strongly had a crush on me
Also, when I asked if there was any reason, he said he'd observed me frequently in the university dining hall before making a move on me (which I would later find out is common for Si people. In fact, my father (SLI) did something similar when courting my mom) and what do you know, I am and always have consistently been a total and complete sucker for anyone saying that they 'chose' me in some way. Also, I had not been popular with the dudes so far (go figure) so the prospect of having a boyfriend at all was alluring; But if you wanna blame my unusually fast response of duality magic go ahead and do it, but 'perfect communicaton/ exchange of true feelings' was not there.

It was a very painful affair for both of us, and if anything, having the same functions made it worse because our priorities were still opposite - I could tell that he was an educated, cultivated man, he was studying environmental sciences, would often share/like little sayings/life advice on facebook, and often listened to radio to keep up with events in his home country, but I could not seem to access that part of him. He did not see the bedroom as a place for philosophizing, basically.
He probably saw something familiar but unreachable in me, too, and deduced that the attention must be going somewhere else - And accused me of cheating with an almost comical randomness, like, if I'm so antisocial and unsexy, who'd I even cheat with? He also asked probing questions about my history (which at the time, consisted of just one single ONS and a teenage relationship where no boinking took place, I might add!) and got suspicious about little things even some done to change things he complained about.
Like, I get that it was maybe my fault in part but it was still kinda irrational.

I was fairly dumbstruck, wondering what I had done to make him have such a low opinion of me or how anyone could look at me and think I was so cold-blooded and untrustworthy. (thankfully, my mom enlightened me that it's just something guys sometimes assume when a relationship ain't going well and generally comforted me)

At this point I realized that we had irreconcilable differences, and sent him a mail in which I ended the relationship & apologized for causing him trouble & dissapointing him.
Another thing that baffled me at the time was how he kept sending me emails for a long, long time after our breakup.
Like, hadn't he just called me all those horrible things? Was it not obvious that I was not what he was looking for? Did he think that just because I took him back we would suddenly become compatible?
I did not reply to a single one and we never saw each other again - what would have been the point, besides causing the both of us more pain?
I guess in hindsight I realize that it was probably just an act of longing or the result of a bad mood, but if nothing else it's evidence that the whole thing was unpleasant for him as well.
I was just super discouraged after that, I realized that I could not meet the needs of a person like that even if I tried my hardest, to a point where it was no longer fun - and even if I could, it would be worthless because it would be forced & artificial.

Sure, I was young and dumb, etc but as far as I can discern, the effect of less youth & dumbness would not have been the sucess of that relationship but not starting it in the first place.

A relationship between the most & least sociable type of person or other complete opposites is HARD; To anyone who wants to attempt the duality thing or just has a crush on someone who happens to be a dual, and wants it to work, I'd say to respect your differences and not make assumptions about the other person's satisfaction level.